Boat, the trade reporting system owned by data vendor Markit, has claimed more than 15% of the market in European equity trade reporting only three months after launch. It has overtaken Deutsche BÃ¶rse and is closing in on the London Stock Exchange and Euronext.

Boat’s progress sends a warning to European exchanges. Turquoise, a European equities trading platform backed by nine banks, is set to open for business in September, and other banks are also working on a rival derivatives trading platform called Project Rainbow.

The Boat platform, which launched in November to take advantage of new European Commission trading rules, handled 15.7% of the value of European trade reports in January, compared with the Börse’s 15.6%, the LSE’s 16.0% and Euronext’s 18.3%, based on the total value of reports on over-the-counter and exchange trades.

The LSE is the dominant European reporting venue ranked by number of shares traded, claiming a third of the market, while Boat is second with 16.4%, Euronext is fourth with 8% and Deutsche Börse is seventh with 4%, based on analysis of equity trade reporting by Reuters, the data provider.
Boat, which has touted itself as a low-cost alternative to trade reporting services offered by Europe’s main exchanges, declined to comment on the results.

The extent to which Boat has taken market share from the LSE, Euronext and Deutsche Börse is unclear because comparable figures are not available before November but Andrew Allwright, business manager Mifid services at Reuters, said: “The major shift away from the exchanges has been for reporting the most liquid stocks.”

Before its launch the exchanges talked down the impact Boat would have on their businesses. An LSE spokesman said when Boat was unveiled in 2006 that trade reporting accounted for “less than 10% of our broker services revenue” but analysts have put the figure higher.